Seven years ago today, my father passed away. I was holding his hand and urging him to let go. It had not been an easy transition, and he had ceased calling out to long-dead friends and relatives that my mother believed were visiting Dad and urging him to cross over. I want to believe that. But at the time it was like listening in to a one-sided phone conversation into eternity.I prayed for him to go. And yet I was not prepared for the shock when his pulse fluttered beneath my fingers. My world shifted on its axis so perceptibly that I felt dizzy. I suddenly realized that I was almost the age he was when I was born and had a brief self-centered thought that he had known me for half his life. And yet, we certainly knew each other imperfectly. Especially, when I was a child, there were things he did that were absolutely incomprehensible to me. It was only later, when I was an adult with children of my own, that I realized the same was certainly true about me to him and to my own children. We are often not transparent to those we love due to their own wounds and trigger points, but also because we WANT to be opaque, thinking that that may protect us from being hurt by those same ones before whom we are vulnerable because we love them.And yet do we ever know those we love? Author Norman Maclean commented on this in his beautiful story, A River Runs Through It, which was made into a lovely film by Robert Redford. One of the most perfect scenes in the film is at the end. Norman's father, a Presbyterian minister, is preaching a sermon right before he retires, and is referencing the loss of his wilder, troubled, younger son and on the mystery of family relationships:

“Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.”

My father was not a perfect man, but I certainly wasn't a perfect daughter, and it's funny how, in the end, the many ways that our loved ones may have failed us begin to pale as we consider all the small ways they gifted us and blessed us and strengthened us and enveloped us. We all do the best we can-- or at least try to, and hope we don't irreparably hurt each other along the way. The river of our life runs over the rocks and under the rocks that make up all that has happened to us or that we have done. That river looks like it is being redirected by the rocks, but eventually with time the rocks themselves are carved and smoothed and reshaped by the rocks. Love can do that too.Hopefully, if that happens, we get the chance to try to make amends to those we love-- and we then seize that chance and act upon it, which is often an entirely different source of potential failure and regret.I once watched some Tibetan Buddhist monks crafting a sand mandala. I was lucky enough to observe it just as they were completing this intense, intricate piece of artwork. After they finished it, they paused, and then they swiped across it, destroying the beautiful image they had just spent so long deliberately creating and then just as deliberately destroying. The entire process had taken days, and it was finished for only a few moments, and then it was gone.Too often we spend too many hours creating a mandala out of our resentments instead of the love with which we have been blessed. But instead of examining the mandala of collected wrongs that we paint in sand, we need to smear our palms across our handiwork of anger and let the wind carry the grains of sand away. Hopefully, if we have been hurt, we allow the person who has hurt us to return to us as well. We certainly cannot truly live while we clasp the iron weight of resentment to our hearts and cram it into the space in our hearts where love belongs, instead. A work like this takes time, and oh, if we could have that time back! What if we spent that time trying to build a true labor of love, focusing on the beauty of a conversation with a parent, and reminding ourselves of the good others try to do for us and that we do for them?We have to remember and embrace the unblunted wisdom in the lines of one of my favorite songwriter/ poets, Mary Chapin Carpenter: "Forgiveness doesn't come with a debt." No matter what, my father's presence in my life was and will always remain an absolute force in my life. Love is that. It molds us and shapes us. We long for it, yet we don't give away enough of it ourselves.And yet, love is what we are called to do. Both the messy, intimate, personal love between lovers, between parents and children, between friends, between siblings, and the love we are called to bear toward each other in our churches, our communities, our world. Our love for each other moves us toward the hope of who we are really supposed to be, of who we are intended to be.

Unlike God, we are imperfect lovers. We are faltering friends. We are capricious children. Our hesitant attempts at love lead to imperfect knowledge. This is because our attempts at love are imperfect as well. But there is perfect love. And it is the greatest of all gifts given to us.

Almighty God,
our trust is in you, whose abiding love soothes all fear and worry. We cry out
to you and you envelop us in your love as we pass through the cares and
concerns of this life. We thank you for your goodness and mercy which follows
us all the days of our lives. Guard, strengthen, and comfort, we pray, your children whom we now name, and uphold them in their need. Amen.

Monday, January 21, 2013

The readings for yesterday in the lectionary have as a common theme community and God's abundance. Isaiah 62:1-5 calls out for a nation to be restored through God's abundant love and mercy. Psalm 36: 5-10 also reminds us that God's love is limitless and prepares a feast for us. 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 urges a community to come together in the face of the urge to divide ourselves according to honor rather than understand that unity is vital to live as the body of Christ.The reading from John details the miracle at the wedding at Cana. As I was reminded in the wonderful sermon I heard yesterday in church, Jesus' mother notices there is no wine, and her initially hesitant son restores abundance to the feast in the face of disaster, with the help of a lot of servants who had to carry a lot of water. Jesus performs this miracle with the help of the community.These are the readings we heard yesterday. Today, we remember the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin LUther King, Jr. And then, an even further blessing, we witness the demonstration of the blessing of living in a stable democratic republic. Today, we witnessed the second inauguration of President Obama. In his speech, he quoted the Declaration of Independence as well as referencing the Gettysburg Address, he reminded my generation's task to make these words real for every American: that we are endowed by our Creator with Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. These are inalienable rights, and they belong to all. God's limitless love provides abundance for us through unmerited grace.We have once again been reminded by several people during the ceremony, beginning with Senator Lamar Alexander, with the inaugural address from the president, with the poem by Richard Blanco, and with the closing invocation by the Rev. Luis Leon, that we are ONE people, and that we must overcome our divisions. And then, we heard this further echo from yesterday's readings in the prayer given by the Rev. Leon: "We pray for your blessing because without it, we will only see scarcity in the midst ofabundance..." A few years ago, we were driving through Yosemite, and we saw this tree growing out of the living rock, right before a sheer drop. In the background was a magnificent waterfall. I thought about that seed that years ago was blown across the rock until it found a crevice, and perhaps a little rain fell that encouraged it to sprout. It spread out its embrace into the rock, took root, and thrived.Instead of bemoaning what is not there, let us understand that we therefore have an opportunity to act, to be the agents of change that make the miracle of abundance for all possible. Even if we may feel that "our time is not yet come." Instead of thinking that we do not have enough, that we are clinging to a precipice, instead of conflating difficulty with impossibility, let us take hold and determine to flourish by each taking responsibility for what we can do.May Almighty God preserve us from the tendency to close our eyes to the blessings all around us. May we see what is there, and make sure that abundance is available for all. May we see God's abundant love for us even in the midst of our trials and understand that the work of all of us is required to bring about the miracle. Amen.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

One of my favorite things to do as I get a little more involved in twitter (now doing my own feed and the one for my church, because, you know, as a mom, daughter, teacher, and church-junkie I don't have enough in my life) is reading some of the hilarious things that trend.

Sometimes, I just shake my head at some of the strange topics that bloom from the collective need twitteristas have to get some attention (hey, not pointing the finger except at myself).

Right now one of the trending topics among we of the Episcopalian variety has been about General Ordination Exams. So far, Crusty Old Dean (already someone whom I find wildly entertaining and informative) has the best post that has been tweeted.